Scott Cam speaks out about cheating scandal ahead of The Block finale

Scott Cam has defended his show in the lead-up to Sunday’s Block finale after a dramatic season that saw contestants demanding the judges be sacked.

Scott Cam has laughed off demands by this years’ Block contestants for the show’s judges to be sacked.

After a season of twists, turns and fiery arguments — not to mention furious on-camera outbursts against judges Shaynna Blaze, Neale Whitaker and Darren Palmer — Scotty spoke to news.com.au ahead of Sunday’s The Block finale.

When asked about the Blockheads repeatedly dissing advice from the judges and calling for them to be fired, Scotty said that any insistence that the contestants knew more than the renovation experts was just plain “wrong”.

He also weighed in on the season’s wild cheating scandal, calling the move by the contestants allegedly involved — Tanya, Vito, Luke and Josh — “odd”, and slamming the decision to wait until the end of the season to come forward.

Scotty’s fierce defence of judging trio

“The judges gave very constructive criticism,” Scotty told news.com.au.

“The judges want them to make money, I want them to make money. The biggest thing that I would hate to see is somebody working that hard and not making a quid,” he added, saying that on-camera sledges from Mitch and Mark in particular were the result of damaged egos.

“When the judges do go hard, they bruise some egos of the contestants, and they get upset and cranky at the judges and want them replaced, but at the end of the day the judges are right,” he said.

The contestants claimed they were being unfairly singled out by the judges. Picture: Channel 9

“(The contestants) are entitled to their opinion, but they’re wrong,” he laughed, going on to reference Mitch and Mark’s sensational walkout after their lack of pantry was criticised during kitchen week.

“Mitch and Mark blew up about the drawer pantry … they had two drawers in a house for a family of five. Two drawers for a pantry, and they go ‘the judges are completely wrong’ but they’re not.

“I’ve got a family of five, I’ve got a walk-in pantry and it’s still too small. I’ve got two boys in their 20s, they’ll eat my pantry out in seconds like locusts,” he added.

Scotty weighs in on ‘Un Australian’ cheating scandal

Make no mistake, this season was punctuated by the explosive early cheating scandal which saw Tanya, Vito, Luke and Josh penalised after a photo of the production schedule was circulated. Thus far, the teams have claimed the photo was taken by ‘an anonymous tradie’ in confusing on-camera confessionals.

On Sunday, however, twins Luke and Josh have vowed to finally reveal the truth — a move Scotty admits he’s “disappointed” by.

“It was an unusual thing to do on day one of a show you don’t know much about,” he said of the teams’ attempting to cheat to begin with.

“You’ve got your cap in hand, a bit nervous, and it’s an odd thing to do and to even think of doing on day one.”

The former Love Island stars have promised to tell all in the final episode.

It comes weeks after Tanya shared ‘her truth’ about the incident in a shaky on-camera confession.

As the scandal unfolded over several episodes, Scotty said there were “multiple opportunities” for the teams to come forward, adding that a final-episode confession was not planned by producers.

He added that he wished the issue had been sorted out early to avoid it dragging on over several weeks.

“It dominated the show. I am disappointed because it’s my show and it’s un Australian to cheat. Everyone needs fair playing field in a competition,” he said.

“It’s detrimental to the whole show, it’s detrimental to my job … It’s affecting me because it’s part of me,” he added.

As for whether the last-minute production schedule flip has had any impact on the builds, he said it was actually the production crew that suffered most.

“It affected us more than the contestants really. The production was affected more with the crews and the suppliers and things like that,” said Scott.

Scotty was forced to scrap the original schedule in light of the saga.

Response to claims Love Island twins ‘gave up’ on comp

Controversial duo Luke and Josh have been slammed by viewers this season — with judge Neale Whitaker even musing that they appeared to have “given up” before the end of the competition.

But Scotty has jumped in to defend the boys against the backlash.

“They had a bad couple of weeks, but they’re hard workers and they really tried. (They had) no experience too by the way, but they’ve turned up and built a whole house,” he said.

Neale Whitaker had been particularly critical of the boys' efforts.

“At the end of that rough couple of weeks they did give up a bit. They got overwhelmed, but then they dug deep and finished and cleaned it up and worked really hard in that last couple of weeks.

“They worked hard all season apart from the two weeks in the middle which everyone is entitled to. You’ve gotta be really strong to keep up that energy level throughout 12 weeks of The Block, it’s really hard to do, but they had a crack and finished it.”

What to expect on auction day

After last year’s shocking auction day scandal which left the winners with no payment from the mysterious buyer, Scotty says there’s no way to predict what could go down.

He did that say he expected Ronnie and Georgia to select the auction order strategically to put themselves on top — but wouldn’t penalise other teams unfairly, despite tensions all season.

Georgia and Tanya have clashed all season.

“They’ll do an auction order that benefits them, but they’re going to do it fairly because they’re fair players,” he said.

Commenting on what he expects of the day, he said: “There’s always a surprise on auction day, it’s our most important show of the season and it’s the only one we have no control over.

“You wake up on auction day feeling a bit sick in the stomach … I’m just along for the ride like the others. We’re all in the dark.”

The Block finale airs Sunday from 7pm on Channel 9

Originally published as Scott Cam speaks out about cheating scandal ahead of The Block finale